IGLAS Paired Courses

Prof. Susan Phillips

This course explores the global movement for food sovereignty--the right of peoples to define their own food systems--through comparative study across several of Pitzer’s study abroad programs. It is anchored in Parma (Italy), Ecuador, Costa Rica, Nepal, Vietnam, Brazil, and Southern Africa. Students will investigate how food sovereignty is understood and enacted in diverse cultural and ecological contexts and how communities enact sovereignty through agroecology, cooperative economies, seed networks, and land rights movements. From indigenous seed networks in the Andes to agroecological cooperatives in Brazil and Slow Food initiatives in Parma or Blue Zones in Sardinia, the course will highlight how communities reclaim/maintain control over their food systems in the face of globalized agribusiness and climate disruption.

Prof. Marcus Rodríguez 

This course introduces students to the work of Friendship Bench, a transformative community-based, task-sharing model that trains lay health workers and peers to deliver brief, structured, evidence-informed therapy. Students will learn about the origins of Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe, as well as the implementation of their model though their Online Buddies program, a peer-based emotional support network for young adults operating in South Africa and Vietnam. In both countries, the Friendship Bench has been adapted to support individuals affected by HIV and other public health challenges. The course includes virtual dialogues with Friendship Bench team members, as well as an applied project for non-clinical contexts such as schools, shelters, or youth programs, modeled after the Friendship Bench’s community outreach. 

Prof. Alma Bezares

This course explores how societies manage natural resources and uses economic principles to analyze how institutional structures and market incentives shape their allocation. Ecuador and Brazil will be studied as countries at the intersection of biodiversity conservation, extractive industries, environmental degradation, communal vs. private land rights, and economic development. In the case of Ecuador, the country represents an opportunity to study the political economy of biodiversity conservation and resource dependence through the history of oil extraction in the Amazon, the Yasuní/ITT initiative, and the 2023 referendum, a pioneering case of rights of nature. Through the study of Brazil, students will explore Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous land rights, international carbon markets, agricultural expansion and its relationship to global supply chains. The course approaches these and other cases as models of natural resource governance, and will explore how they interact with institutions, history, and economic development paths across cultures. 

Prof. Alicia Bonaparte

This course brings a global comparative perspective by incorporating the Brazilian context to the study of different types of cultures and aspects of culture and the discussion of how race is contextualized in the US. It introduces students to Quilombos (Maroon) communities as an example of racial communalism and a refutation of Eurocentrism.  It also explores how different racial groups view and discuss race in contemporary Brazil touching on issues such as colorism, majority groups, minority groups, racial formation, ethnicity, institutional and interpersonal discrimination, and prejudice. 

Prof. Mara Barbosa 

This course explores the local and global diverse experiences of bilingual individuals, focusing on how language shapes identity, literacy, and social participation. Students will engage with key sociolinguistic theories and concepts such as bilingualism, language shift, and heritage language maintenance. As part of the course, students will have the opportunity to engage with student peers in Brazil to explore how bilingualism is shaped by culture, politics, and inequality in a country in which students are required to demonstrate knowledge of a foreign language to access public higher education. The course also includes an engagement component in local Inland Empire schools and is designed to connect theory, research, and practice, to promote a deeper understanding of bilingualism across diverse sociocultural and educational contexts.

Prof. Harmony O’Rourke

This course examines the historical interplay of endogenous and exogenous influences in how people have conceptualized and experienced African environments over the last 150 years.  It probes the ways African spirits, spiritualities, and secular thinking have imbued the nonhuman world with meaning, how asymmetries in epistemological approaches emerged, and whether it is possible to bridge worlds and worldviews in the Anthropocene. The course will draw connections across the Atlantic between West Africa and Bahia, the capital of Afro-Brazilian culture and an epicenter of the African Diaspora. Students will learn about the convergences of Catholicism, Islam, and devotion to the Orixas.

Prof. Colin Robins 

Key concepts of this environmental science course are tied to Costa Rica’s physical geography, soil resources, biodiversity, and land use history. The course integrates Costa Rican case studies on topics including soil taxonomy, biogeochemical cycles, soil hydrology, and agroecology. Students will compare soil types encountered in different sites or hill slope positions across Costa Rica’s climate gradient; discuss the impact of land use practices on soil nitrogen and carbon cycling; compare soil hydrology in humid, tropical Costa Rican settings against those in semi-arid, xeric Claremont soils; and compare the impact on soil resources of sustainable agricultural practices to palm plantations. 

Prof. Donald McFarlane

These two courses include modules connected to Pitzer’s Firestone Center for Restoration and Ecology in Costa Rica. Students will learn to use GIS in addressing a broad range of environmental problems including vegetation coverage, canopy density, landslides and over-grazing by cattle, mapping topography and vegetation features, species monitoring and habitat assessments. 

Prof. Urmi Enginner Willoughby

This course examines the history of food cultivation and agricultural development in North America and the United States from a global perspective, with a focus on the social, environmental, and health impacts of food production and consumption. Students will learn about plantation agriculture and US corporate imperialism in Central America, with an emphasis on Costa Rica. Topics include pre-colonial histories of Indigenous land use and food production; European colonization and the rise of plantation slavery; the rise of industrial/chemical agriculture and rural transformation; and the United Fruit’s (UFC) activities in Costa Rica within the larger context of the UFC and other US fruit, coffee, and sugar companies that operated in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and parts of Central America. Students will explore the role of US corporations in building railroads, acquiring land, and influencing/coercing governments to allow corporate development, the displacement of local farmers, deforestation, and monoculture farming. 

Prof. Brent Armendinger

This course explores the role of community practices in the creation, publication, distribution, and sustenance of literature. Students will examine, and sometimes participate in, the work of various community initiatives, literary organizations, independent bookstores, small presses, journals, and authors. Through readings, discussions, field trips and volunteer work outside of class, and their own creative writing, students will engage with the intersections between literary practice and community. In addition to its focus on the Inland Empire and Los Angeles regions, the course includes a module highlighting the work of small literary presses in Quito, Ecuador.  Through this module students will explore the labor beyond the act of writing that keeps literature alive and relevant to communities in the Ecuadorian context. 

Prof. Jessica McCoy

As part of this course, students will examine traditional religious iconography from Parma—such as Correggio’s altarpieces and cathedral frescoes, and works by Parmigianino—alongside contemporary artists like Kehinde Wiley, Chris Ofili, Damien Hirst, and Ai Weiwei. While medieval iconography sought transcendence and collective faith, contemporary iconography expresses fragmentation and multiplicity. Yet both depend on shared visual languages that help communities construct meaning. The shift from sacred to secular— from collective belief to individual interpretation—illuminates not only the evolution of art but also the changing nature of human consciousness.  
 

Prof. Adrian Pantoja 

The course examines immigration politics from a comparative lens with special emphasis on comparing immigration flows and politics in the United States and Italy. Students will focus on popular and political reactions to immigration in Italy, a country which is among the leading destinations for immigrants in the region and governed by Giorgia Melloni, a conservative populist with a strong anti-immigrant agenda. The course delves into the rise of Meloni (2022), Trump (2016, 2024) and other anti-immigration candidates and parties in Western Democracies to comparatively analyze migration flows, immigration policies and politics, and the incorporation process.
 

Prof. Erich Steinman

This course examines human societies and their relationships to nature, with an underlying focus on the societal causes and implications of climate change. While using a sociological lens, the course will draw on an interdisciplinary mix of materials to explore different societies’ historical and contemporary relationships to the non-human world.  The course will draw on material about Nepal to provide an enriching and comparative perspective on modernity, colonialism, and ecological transformation; Indigenous perspectives on Western culture, earth, gender; and post-development, degrowth and environmental justice social movements in the Global North and Global South. 

Co-taught by Regina Range (Director of Pitzer Programs) and Tessa Peterson (Director of CASA Pitzer)

Tuesdays 9:35AM-12:20PM

This course introduces students to the values, ethics, and methods of community-based education and research, emphasizing connections between local and global engagement. Through panels with faculty, students, and community partners, case studies, and reflective practice, students will explore how immersive learning fosters intercultural understanding and social responsibility. A central focus will be on Pitzer’s international programs in Nepal, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Italy, and Southern Africa and the opportunities they provide for transformative, community-based education. First and second year Pitzer students completing this course will be eligible to apply for IGLAS funding to support a project or internship while abroad in one of Pitzer's programs.